The Berlin office was the most toxic environment in which I have worked. The beginning of the end started when the VP told recruiting to only hire consultant roles into management positions. Management quickly filled up with friends hiring friends from the likes of McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc. People with little management experience came in to manage large teams. Morale was low. Attrition was high, and the typical response was: "You know people who live in Berlin. They're more concerned with partying than their career. Of course they'll complain and then leave." No one wanted to look at the employee NPS survey and read the pages of legitimate complaints and requests. The place was also run on a culture of fear. Tools that were supposed to encourage 360 degree feedback and transparency or to protect employees were used against them. It was common for someone's anonymous feedback of another employee to be brought up in their own performance reviews. And favoritism and tribal thinking were on the levels of a reality TV show. There was no objectivity in reviews, promotions or general treatment of employees. Employees who were being discussed for promotion in one review cycle would 6 months later be "under performers who need to be pressured to leave". People would be demoted from manager to individual contributor and have their entire team taken away from them simply because they disagreed in a meeting with a favorite of another senior leader. At the same time, these favorites could do no wrong. One manager was mentioned so many times as a reason for leaving in Exit Interviews, that eventually HR had to bring it up. The solution was to fire the HR rep who mentioned it for being "biased" and transfer the manager to another team. There was another instance of a Director who regularly slept with employees and who consistently got drunk at company events and shared all the details, sometimes even showing texts as proof. Multiple employees have made sexual harassment claims, but this Director is still there. To compensate for it, the company pays well for mid to high level management positions and showers employees in social events and benefits. From the outside, it looks like a party, but for most people it is only a matter of time before something happens that makes you feel like you are no more than an object to be thrown away when your use has worn out.
